In Yunnan, there is a product called flower cake, and friends who have traveled to Yunnan have probably bought it. The advertising slogan of the famous flower cake brand Jiahua is "Three roses in one cake." Personally, I think this is a very good piece of copy: the selling point is detailed and vivid, and the numbers are precise and specific. But here's the question: after reading this appeal, would you consider ordering flower cakes? Or does this sentence stimulate your desire to eat flower cakes? I think probably not. Because functional promotion can only reinforce people's decision-making patterns, but it cannot stimulate people's desire to consume. In other words, only when you have already decided to buy flower cakes does this selling point copy work. If you haven't developed the intention to buy, then whether it's promoting "whole-petal rose filling, real ingredients, freshly baked" or "selected good ingredients, organic double certification," it's useless. This is the limitation of functional promotion. But many professional marketers often fall into a misunderstanding in their work: they think that to do communication, they must extract a product selling point, inform consumers of the product's function and quality, and provide a reason for consumers to buy, and then they will choose to buy. I call this misunderstanding: the cognitive education trap. If this misunderstanding goes one step further, it falls into another trap: proprietary paranoia. To build a brand, you must find a unique selling point and establish a differentiated advantage. If my selling point is also available to others, and my promotional slogan can be used by others, then it has no sales power. Adhering to this concept, many people's approach to branding is to desperately seek differentiation in functional selling points, and through a large amount of media publicity, conduct cognitive education on consumers, thereby persuading them to pay. The cognitive education trap and proprietary paranoia—I call these the two major pitfalls in brand building. This approach, on one hand, easily leads to differentiation for the sake of differentiation. Although it achieves difference, the difference is too niche and minority, not the basis for consumer purchase, so it lacks appeal; on the other hand, functional promotion is difficult to persuade consumers to buy. When consumers are not interested and lack purchase desire, forcibly instilling product information is very ineffective; third, relying on strong promotion of product selling points to brainwash consumers is very expensive. In fact, for how to do marketing and build a brand, ultimately we must return to the fundamental question: "Why do people buy?" Only by understanding the truth of purchase can brand marketing have a foundation. "Understanding the truth of purchase gives brand marketing a foundation" The core of purchase achievement relies on three factors: scene relevance, mental uniqueness, and social popularity. Scene relevance means that the brand should be related to the consumer's life scenes. When consumers are in that scene, they can quickly think of your brand and understand its value. This way, the brand can connect with consumer needs and stimulate interest and desire to buy. People's needs always arise in scenes and are determined by scenes. Take the flower cake mentioned above; the reason its functional promotion fails is that it does not occupy a scene in consumers' lives. We buy flower cakes in only one scene: when traveling to Yunnan to bring gifts for friends and family. In the scene of daily leisure snacks, consumers simply don't think of flower cakes. This involves the second factor: mental uniqueness. Mental uniqueness refers to the degree to which consumers remember the brand and recall it when making purchase decisions. When consumers want to shop, can they think of you first and foremost? If they can't remember you for a long time, or think of several other brands first and only think of you last, then the possibility of them buying from you is minimal. Simply put, this is called "rememberable and recallable" , which is the basic indicator of brand building. The third factor is social popularity. It refers to whether the brand has heat and topicality among social groups. People's purchase behavior is often not entirely based on personal needs, but is influenced by others and social trends. What others have, what society is popularizing, people also want to buy; social popularity can determine purchases. For example, in February this year, "The Art of War" sold out because of the hit TV series "The Knockout"; Plum blossom sauce became popular because of Li Ronghao's song of the same name; In June, when Messi visited China, the young fan who rushed onto the field wore a pair of Yonex badminton shoes. The live video was watched by hundreds of millions, and the shoes also made it to Tmall's 618 bestseller list. There is a social phenomenon called "intermental phenomenon," which refers to the phenomenon where people are influenced by others. Simply put, it's following the trend; in professional terms, it's imitation and conformity with the group. "The ultimate essence of brand communication —Triggering group imitation behavior" Tarde, one of the founders of French sociology in the 19th century, said, "Imitation is communication." I think this sentence explains how advertising and brand communication actually work on consumers and drive sales. The ultimate essence of brand communication is to trigger consumers' group imitation behavior. In marketing, we often talk about a term called FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) . We fear missing the latest news and trends, we fear not knowing gossip and hot topics that others already know, and we fear not having what others have, because this means being outdated and disconnected from the group. So when a product has social popularity and becomes a hot topic, it can maximize people's enthusiasm for purchase. For example, in recent years, consumers queued for a long time for a cup of Heytea, and recently, people queued in front of Huawei stores to buy Mate60 Pro, as well as the hot sales of sauce-flavored coffee. This is the value of socialization. Socialization not only affects consumer purchase behavior but also affects consumers' perception of the brand. In psychology, there is also a phenomenon called the retina effect. It refers to an accidental factor that, due to our excessive attention, becomes a common phenomenon. The commercial value of this phenomenon is that if a brand has social popularity, then the brand's advertisements and various marketing actions will be noticed more. For example, recently, Florasis has been highly popular, so every marketing move by Florasis, from the apology letter to the "crazy" public relations, to inviting veteran athlete Chusovitina to shoot an oriental makeup advertisement, each wave has sparked social debate and been scrutinized by the public under a microscope. If a brand lacks social attention and only does pure hard advertising and precision marketing, only reaching its target consumers, the effect will be very poor. Only when a brand is wrapped in the social and cultural atmosphere can it truly break through platform barriers and the fog of information explosion. Brands must strive for socialization, create topics, hot spots, and discussions at the social level. Socialization can amplify the effect of advertising, feed traffic, and feed sales. In fact, the big problem for most brands on the marketing side is not that the product is bad, nor that consumers don't know how good your product is, but that they don't realize they can buy from you. Consumers don't lack needs; they just don't have needs for you. Therefore, the indicator of brand awareness should be composed of the brand's own salience and the brand's popularity at the social level. Social popularity can make more consumers realize the existence of the brand and successfully stimulate demand. Take brand reputation, for example. In the past, we often looked at consumers' cognition, association, and attitude toward the brand from an individual level, but individual preferences are easily influenced by social public opinion. A successful topic or event can greatly enhance brand reputation and word-of-mouth, while a crisis can also push the brand image to the bottom. For example, last month, Jie Rou (a tissue brand) mistakenly entered the wrong product price in the live stream. If shipped at that price, the company would lose tens of millions. A customer voluntarily canceled the "10 yuan for 6 boxes" order. For this, Jie Rou wrote a letter thanking the customer and presented a gift package with many benefits and rights. Subsequently, the topic #Jie Rou writes letter to thank customer who canceled 10 yuan 6 boxes order# began to ferment on Weibo and became a hot topic. It helped Jie Rou gain a wave of goodwill, and the brand enhancement effect was comparable to a year of image advertising, enough to make up for the loss caused by the wrong price. Today, with rapid development, changing consumption concepts, and the rise of new generations of consumers, various subcultures are emerging. Many classic brands that were once well-known and sold well for years are facing aging issues, and rejuvenation has become a challenge for many enterprises. But if we carefully examine this issue, you will find that many brands age not because products and technology are outdated, but because the brand's socialization is insufficient. People no longer pay attention to and talk about it, the brand disappears from social trends, thus becoming outdated and disconnected from the contemporary era in people's minds, and then abandoned by consumers. At the beginning of this year, the old national brand Tianfu Cola rushed to the hot search because of a bankruptcy rumor. At that time, its chairman clarified the bankruptcy rumor in the live stream and personally brought goods, attracting millions of netizens to watch and support. On that day, Tmall sales surged 30 times. From a sales perspective, consumers bought mainly driven by Weibo hot searches and the popular atmosphere laid by social discussion. From a brand building perspective, the past lack of purchase was not related to product strength, but because Tianfu Cola had long lost mental salience and social popularity, disappearing from consumer memory. The brand thus aged, and even brand awareness, recognition, and reputation were all gone. The purpose of brand building is not just to influence target consumers, but to form popularity and public influence at the social level. Remember, the brand is not on the shelf, nor only in consumers' minds, but also exists in social culture. Brand building must strive to break through from social culture. Humans are social animals. A person's cognition, need generation, and purchase behavior always occur in a social environment. Without the bedding of social and cultural atmosphere and the push of hot events, a brand relying solely on promoting product functions and educating consumers is difficult to trigger group competitive buying, and also difficult to establish a good brand image and brand cognition. "The goal of socialization is to establish brand discourse power" Socialization is an important dimension of brand building. Although the concept of social marketing has been around for a long time, brand socialization is not just opening an official Weibo account or official WeChat account and then publishing some content; it is about helping the brand build a good public context, ensuring that the brand is positively and actively noticed and discussed in the public environment. In short, the goal of socialization is to establish brand "discourse power." Peter Drucker, the "father of modern management," emphasized "Customer perceived value determines everything." The survival and development of an enterprise depend on how consumers perceive it. Therefore, brand building should aim at constructing discourse power, coordinating product development, technological innovation, competitive strategy formulation, brand building, marketing promotion, event public relations, media placement, etc. The essence of all corporate competition ultimately is the competition for discourse power. Let's look at an industry case: new energy vehicles. As we know, for electric vehicles, product value and user cognition are built on two core technologies: intelligent driving and batteries. Now when it comes to electric vehicles, among the most well-known and influential brands, Tesla occupies intelligent driving, allowing consumers to form a brand cognition of technology and innovation. BYD occupies batteries, forming a brand cognition of safety and reliability. Tesla's entire marketing strategy, for example, look at its product roadmap: Tesla first built an electric supercar Roadster, then used the luxury sedan Model S's large screen and technology to subvert traditional luxury car cognition. This is completely different from past new energy vehicle companies that started with economy models. Musk's goal at the time was to break the stereotype that electric vehicles were destined to be golf carts. Another example is Tesla's brand story "Silicon Valley vs. Detroit," and Tesla's angel group "Silicon Valley elites," as well as Elon Musk's personal image and experience, the SpaceX startup story, and the epic performance of sending Tesla into space. All of this is to construct Tesla's influence and discourse power in the field of intelligent driving and technological innovation, drawing a clear line with traditional car companies. BYD, on the other hand, released the battery technology brand "Blade Battery" in March 2020 and promoted it on a large scale. Many consumers still have a deep impression of BYD's needle puncture test, which established BYD's discourse power in the field of electric vehicle batteries and established BYD's position in the electric vehicle industry. In January 2023, BYD launched a four-wheel independent motor technology called "Yi Si Fang"; in April 2023, it released another new technology brand, the intelligent body control system "Yun Nian." As we all know, the three major components of electric vehicles are battery, motor, and electronic control. BYD creating a technology brand in each of these three fields is precisely to establish its discourse power in the electric field. Tesla and BYD construct their brand discourse power in completely different ways. Even looking at the negative news of these two car companies, such as accident types, they are clearly distinct because these two brands have established different cognitive frameworks in our minds. Today, consumers have greater consumption power and discourse influence. "Everyone is a self-media." Every consumer has gained unprecedented power in this era. This is the most fundamental spirit of the Internet: "empowerment to people." This is an era belonging to everyone, an era of losing control. In this consumer-dominated era, enterprises are more likely to "lose control." Some time ago, a restaurant in Shenzhen, Guangdong, did not allow delivery riders to wait inside the store and told them to get out. After the incident was exposed online, netizens flocked to the store's online platform to write negative reviews, reaching more than 9,000 in half a day, and finally the store's delivery platform was forced to go offline. We can completely say that today's consumers have mastered the dominant power, choice power, and even ownership power of consumption. How consumers talk about brands in the public online context has a huge impact on corporate brand building and product sales. Enterprises must pay more attention to the construction of brand discourse power, strengthen risk awareness and dynamic monitoring, and handle various risk events promptly and carefully. Moreover, you should notice that in recent years, brands are increasingly prone to public opinion crises. This is a concrete manifestation of consumers leading public opinion. Especially with the emergence of various new media platforms, the speed of information dissemination has accelerated, and everyone can speak out, making it easier for a brand to be ignited by a spark and explode the entire social network. For example, in February this year, a netizen complained that a hotel in Kangding refused to cancel a reservation, and after giving a negative review, was insulted by the merchant. This incident triggered collective attention from netizens online. Subsequently, the local culture and tourism director responded promptly on Weibo with the handling results, publicly apologized, and took the opportunity to warn all businesses in Ganzi Prefecture to operate with integrity and purify the market, otherwise "whoever smashes the pot of Ganzi tourism, I will smash his rice bowl." Subsequently, #Whoever smashes Ganzi tourism, I smash his rice bowl# rushed to the top of Weibo hot searches. This topic not only recovered the negative impact but also successfully won public favor. Moreover, many KOLs and blue-V media participated in forwarding and commenting on this matter, helping Ganzi create more hot searches, such as #Netizens praise Ganzi Culture and Tourism Bureau's execution# , #Why Ganzi gets negative reports but receives praise# , #Ganzi Culture and Tourism Director responds to blogger's hotel cancellation being scolded# , #How should the cultural tourism industry develop after the director becomes famous# , etc. Blue-V media, as authoritative endorsement, enhanced the tourism brand image and credibility of Ganzi, while bloggers from different fields expanded Ganzi's radiation in many segmented circles such as finance, tourism, technology, and animation, further promoting the influence of the event. Between the positive and negative, this has a significant role in the construction of Ganzi's tourism brand. To build a good discourse ecosystem, from within the enterprise, the most fundamental thing is to continuously improve product strength and brand strength, strengthen user management, and actively output brand culture and values. This is the most important in the long term and is the fundamental guarantee of the brand. In the medium term, enterprises should also strengthen internal management, especially the management of frontline employees, and establish a complete after-sales service and customer complaint response mechanism. In addition, they should strengthen training on marketing common sense for employees. In the short term, enterprises should strengthen the diagnosis of the online discourse ecosystem, prepare plans and response processes in advance, make judgments in emergencies, and reasonably use various platform tools such as micro-rumor refutation complaint labels, enterprise statement labels, topic party modules, content annotations, etc. In addition, I particularly think that enterprises must understand the advertising law to avoid marketing failures, and also understand various laws and regulations to protect legitimate rights and interests. On the other hand, from outside the enterprise, brand discourse power construction is not about the enterprise shouting loudly by itself, but about speaking together with platforms, media, KOLs, opinion leaders, consumers, related stakeholders, and the public, forming resonance at the social level. McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." This means that compared to the information itself, the medium carrying the information also transmits information, and sometimes the medium form is even more important than the information itself. For example, the same event, explained through an article, has a different effect than interpreting it with a short video; the same event, said by an ordinary netizen, has a different effect than reported by an authoritative media. "The trilogy of brand discourse power construction" Brand discourse power needs to be co-constructed, and it should include three parts: Industry reputation — becoming the industry representative and standard, occupying the core position of the industrial chain, improving product bargaining power, and influencing customer choices and industry public policy formulation; User word-of-mouth — shaping positive word-of-mouth, becoming an important standard and reference for consumers to choose products, spreading brand strength through user word-of-mouth, and attracting potential customers; Social public opinion — shaping a positive image in the minds of the public and creating a good discourse environment. To achieve this effect, enterprises should operate major social platforms in daily life, open self-media accounts, and publish brand content, and then use various tools, such as Weibo's brand account, brand specialty, search, etc., to build a positive content ecosystem. At the same time, they should also use media endorsement and KOLs to interpret product strength, enhance the authority and credibility of the enterprise in the industry; when necessary, they can also help enterprises do neutral interpretation, clarify false rumors, and restore objective facts. Secondly, enterprises should strengthen the operation of consumers, play with consumers more, create good user word-of-mouth, and help the brand continuously build positive discourse assets. At critical moments, these loyal users and fans can help the brand speak out, and the brand's past positive word-of-mouth can also become a powerful handle for the brand to deal with risks. Today we have many social platforms, and the attributes and fields of different platforms are different. According to my understanding:
Weibo is the "public opinion field," where various social hot spots, topics, and major events are noticed, discussed, and debated.
WeChat is the "private domain field," where official accounts, video accounts, WeChat groups, mini-programs, enterprise WeChat, and personal WeChat can help enterprises do private domain operations and accumulate fans.
Douyin is the "entertainment field," a big stage for national entertainment.
Kuaishou is the "life field," compared with Douyin, it presents more real life scenes.
Bilibili is the "interest field," where new generation consumers are scattered in different circles.
Xiaohongshu is the "aesthetic field," which is also a display of life scenes, but with filters, showing a more refined and moving side of life.
Zhihu is the "knowledge field," with more knowledge Q&A and science content. Then, when it comes to the construction of social public discourse, enterprises should make good use of Weibo's products and resource tools, comprehensively monitor the discourse ecosystem and heat data here, including event dissemination heat, forwarding nodes, key communicators, users' positive and negative hot views, etc. This can assist enterprise decision-making at the first time, and enterprises can use this as the basis for judging whether to respond and how to respond. For the construction of discourse power, enterprises should also do one more thing: pay more attention to and analyze the trend of social culture, and insight into the mentality of social groups. Professor Dai Jinhua once said: "Since the 20th century, society has had three core issues: class, race, and gender." These three issues are global, and in various countries and regions, they are high-attention social issues. Of course, in China, the focus of their manifestation is different. Class in China is more manifested in workplace culture and social class differentiation. For example, the popularity of hot words like "worker," "social animal," "996," "involution," and "slacking off" in recent years is related to this big issue, and the popularity of "KFC Crazy Thursday" and the recent uproar caused by Li Jiaqi's remarks are also related to this. Race in China is more manifested in national sentiment and the national trend phenomenon. Today, many enterprises are leveraging this issue to reconstruct brand culture and create marketing actions, such as Li Ning, Guan Xia, Baique Ling, including the recently highly watched Florasis and Bee & Flower, as well as the highly respected Huawei and BYD. On August 9 this year, BYD's 5 millionth new energy vehicle rolled off the line, becoming the world's first car company to achieve this performance. That night, BYD released a themed advertisement film "Together, We Are Chinese Automobiles," interpreting the development and achievements of China's automobile industry from the perspective of the entire Chinese automobile industry. This short film quickly became a hot search topic on Weibo, not only flooding consumers' WeChat Moments but also attracting likes and forwards from many peers. Many people praised BYD for its "big pattern," and this is also related to current social issues and public psychology. As for gender, we can actually see that almost all female-related brands in China, whether underwear, beauty, washing, home cleaning, clothing, etc., are building brands around female values, implementing marketing promotion, and there are countless successful cases. Of course, in recent years, many brand marketing failures and public opinion crises are also related to these issues. Therefore, enterprises must be more cautious about marketing behaviors related to these issues, as they are an important part of the enterprise's discourse ecosystem construction. In this social environment dominated by big data, social media, and public opinion, socialization is increasingly important for corporate brand building, including many brands encountering crises and risks in their growth. In such an environment, enterprises must pay more attention to the construction of discourse power, complete brand socialization, and only brands with discourse power have strong anti-risk capabilities.